The present disclosure relates to wireless systems and methods, and in particular, to systems and methods for acquiring service using multiple wireless communication channels.
Typical wireless communication systems include two systems in different locations that communicate information using radio frequency signals that propagate through the air. In order to communicate such information, the two wireless systems must establish a connection. In cellular applications, the process of establishing a connection between a wireless handset and a cellular base station is sometimes referred to as service acquisition.
FIG. 1 illustrates service acquisition between a cellular base station 101 and a cellular phone 102. Cellular base station 101 may transmit one or more radio access technologies (“RATs”) (herein, “radio communication protocols”). Examples of such protocols include, but are not limited to, GSM, WCDMA, or LTE protocols. Accordingly, one or more cellular base stations in a region may transmit a variety of signal frequencies 150 corresponding to the various protocols available for a cellular phone to use to establish a service connection. When cellular phone 102 is turned on the system may initiate a service acquisition procedure by examining the signal frequencies for one or more radio communication protocols received on antenna 104.
FIG. 2 illustrates a problem with existing service acquisition techniques. A receive channel 200 includes an antenna 250, RF front end 201, and baseband 202. Antenna 250 couples RF signals from the air to an input of RF frontend 201. RF frontend 201 typically includes an input amplifier, demodulator, and analog-to-digital converter to receive the RF signals and generate a digital representation of the demodulated signals, which typically include many signal frequencies configured around a carrier frequency. Baseband 202 receives digital demodulated signals (e.g., without the carrier frequency) and may analyze the received signal frequencies in an attempt to identify the presence of one of the radio communication protocols.
However, since different radio communication protocols typically use different carrier frequencies and different encodings of the signal frequencies, a wireless communication channel must be configured to receive and decipher one particular radio communication protocol at a time. As illustrated in the receive channel 220, a wireless communication channel may first be configured to receive each particular GSM band, then particular WCDMA bands, then particular LTE bands and/or other available radio communication protocols to determine if any of the radio communication protocols are available for establishing a service connection. Accordingly, existing techniques for performing service acquisition can be extremely time consuming.